The Idea of Progress eBook

II

1.

The idea of the universe which prevailed throughout
the Middle Ages, and the general orientation of men’s
thoughts were incompatible with some of the fundamental
assumptions which are required by the idea of Progress.
According to the Christian theory which was worked
out by the Fathers, and especially by St. Augustine,
the whole movement of history has the purpose of securing
the happiness of a small portion of the human race
in another world; it does not postulate a further
development of human history on earth. For Augustine,
as for any medieval believer, the course of history
would be satisfactorily complete if the world came
to an end in his own lifetime. He was not interested
in the question whether any gradual amelioration of
society or increase of knowledge would mark the period
of time which might still remain to run before the
day of Judgment. In Augustine’s system
the Christian era introduced the last period of history,
the old age of humanity, which would endure only so
long as to enable the Deity to gather in the predestined
number of saved people. This theory might be
combined with the widely-spread belief in a millennium
on earth, but the conception of such a dispensation
does not render it a theory of Progress.

Again, the medieval doctrine apprehends history not
as a natural development but as a series of events
ordered by divine intervention and revelations.
If humanity had been left to go its own way it would
have drifted to a highly undesirable port, and all
men would have incurred the fate of everlasting misery
from which supernatural interference rescued the minority.
A belief in Providence might indeed, and in a future
age would, be held along with a belief in Progress,
in the same mind; but the fundamental assumptions were
incongruous, and so long as the doctrine of Providence
was undisputedly in the ascendant, a doctrine of Progress
could not arise. And the doctrine of Providence,
as it was developed in Augustine’s “City
of God,” controlled the thought of the Middle
Ages.

There was, moreover, the doctrine of original sin,
an insuperable obstacle to the moral amelioration
of the race by any gradual process of development.
For since, so long as the human species endures on
earth, every child will be born naturally evil and
worthy of punishment, a moral advance of humanity
to perfection is plainly impossible. [Footnote:
It may be added that, as G. Monod observed, “les
hommes du moyen age n’avaient pas conscience
des modifications successives que le temps apporte
avec lui dans les choses humaines” (Revue Historique,
i. p. 8).]